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THE LIBRARY OF WILLIAM CONGREVE

The Library of

WILLIAM CONGREVE

New York

The New York Public Library

The Library of William Congreve

INTRODUCTION

When William Congreve died in 1729 he left a collection of books which his old friend and publisher, Jacob Tonson, described as "genteel & well chosen." Tonson thought so well of the collection that he urged his nephew, then his agent in London, to purchase Congreve's books. But Congreve had willed them to Henrietta, the young Duchess of Marlborough, who was much concerned with keeping intact "all Mr. Congreaves Personal Estate that he left me" in order to pass it along to her youngest daughter Mary. This daughter, said by gossip to have been Congreve's daughter also, married the fourth Duke of Leeds in 1740, and thus Congreve's books eventually found their way to Hornby Castle, chief seat of the Leeds family in Yorkshire.

There apparently most of Congreve's books remained until about 1930, when the eleventh Duke of Leeds sold his English estates and authorized Sotheby's to auction off "a Selected portion of the Valuable Library at Hornby Castle." Among the 713 items advertised for sale on June 2, 3, and 4, 1930, were ten books containing the signature of William Congreve. These ten, along with a few others that have been discovered here and there with Congreve's name on the title page, and nine books published by subscription with Congreve's name in the printed list of subscribers, made a total of some thirty-odd books known to have been in Congreve's library. These, we may presume, were but a small part of the Congreve books which had been incorporated with the Leeds family library in 1740.

Among the voluminous papers of the Leeds family now stored in the British Museum, the Public Record Office, and several other depositories in England are at least a half-dozen manuscript lists or catalogues of Leeds books. In one list from the middle of the eighteenth century appear a few of the books known to have been in Congreve's library. The same is true of lists dated 1810 and 1850. But it is impossible to use any of these to determine exactly which of the books had once been Congreve's. Fortunately another manuscript list proves to be not a combination of Congreve and Leeds books but a separate catalogue of Congreve's private library. This list, herewith printed, was found by the editor in an English county depository, the Yorkshire Archaeological Society in the City of Leeds.

Let us see why we may accept this list as Congreve's and not simply another catalogue of Leeds family books--as the librarian of the Society had classified it. In the first place, it was found among the Leeds papers, in one of the sixteen boxes of manuscripts brought away from Hornby Castle shortly before it was torn down about 1930. Among the same papers, interestingly enough, is a copy of the marriage settlement whereby Mary Godolphin brought to the Leeds family the books which she had inherited through her mother from Congreve. The list was just where a Congreve document might have been expected. In fact, the list was discovered incidentally while the Leeds papers were being searched as the most promising place to find Congreve letters. Not a single letter to or from Congreve was to be found, perhaps because the gossip to the effect that Mary was the natural daughter of Congreve had caused the family to destroy or mutilate documents bearing his name. Congreve's copy of Terence is a good illustration. On the title page the signature "Will: Congreve" was once entirely blotted out by the same ink that wrote "Leeds" at the side. But the two centuries that have since passed have caused the Leeds ink to fade and thus show very distinctly the clear, black signature of the dramatist. As for Congreve's 44-page manuscript book list, evidently it was too useful to destroy--too valuable a record of the fine collection acquired by the Leeds family. So the list was kept, but the identifying title at the head of the list was crossed out except for its opening word "Bibliotheca." Although the name following that word is illegible for the average reader, one who knows what to look for can still trace out "Gul: Congreve, Armigeri" .

In June, 1930, while the "Selected" books from the Leeds library were being sold at Sotheby's in London in a three-day sale , the "remaining contents" of Hornby Castle were auctioned off by Knight, Frank, and Rutley at old Hornby Castle in Yorkshire in a seven-day sale . The books, which made only a minor part of the latter sale, were all auctioned off on the sixth day. These books were catalogued as Lots 1097 through 1294, with from 2 to 430 books in a single lot, making a total of about 7,475. Only a very small fraction of these were mentioned by title in the printed catalogue, and nothing was said about signatures on title pages. But among those mentioned appear twenty-one of the exact editions in Congreve's list: Numbers 37, 71, 158, 161, 168, 172, 233, 270, 288, 343, 380, 467, 492, 493, 499, 500, 516, 533, 543, 620, 652. Among the "Selected" books catalogued for the Leeds Sale appear sixty-one of the exact editions in Congreve's list: Numbers 4, 10, 42, 55, 76, 79 , 96, 97, 98, 152, 160, 178, 179, 182, 183, 184, 207, 208, 234, 257, 258, 262, 281, 283, 292, 342, 360, 367, 406, 413, 421, 423, 427, 441, 442, 444, 451, 455, 458, 460, 462, 463, 465, 502, 507, 518, 529, 534, 536, 542, 544, 553, 558, 566, 579, 592, 639, 641, 649, 651, 656.

Since Congreve's books had been incorporated with the Leeds library in 1740, we can understand how eighty-two of the identical editions in the list could turn up in sales of Leeds books in 1930. Most of the eighty-two exact editions named in these sales were probably once Congreve's. The fact that Sotheby's catalogue mentions the Congreve signature in only ten books suggests that he usually failed to write his name in his books. Sotheby lists most of the books for which Congreve is known to have subscribed, and yet no mention is made of a Congreve signature in any of them. Nor does any signature appear in the special edition of Rowe's Shakespeare now in the Folger Shakespeare Library and almost certainly once Congreve's.

But other books besides the ten mentioned by Sotheby's were signed by Congreve. One example is Sotheby's item Number 532 , which was sold to McLeish and Sons and then to E. S. de Beer, Esq., before the unmistakable signature of the dramatist was noted. Another example is Congreve's Number 501, which was in the Hornby Castle Sale and bears the true signature, "Wm: Congreve." Especially significant is a letter to the editor dated August 20, 1949, from Her Grace Katherine, Duchess of the tenth Duke of Leeds, stating that many years ago she had herself "made a great hunt for any books at Hornby Castle bearing the signature of Congreve," had found "numbers" of them, and had made a full catalogue with the aid of "Mr. Charles Whibley, the writer & bibliophile." Unfortunately this catalogue has been lost. If it is ever found, it will be an interesting record of autographed Congreve books held together by one family for nearly two centuries. But the catalogue could not include all the items on the Congreve list since, as we have seen, the dramatist evidently owned many books in which he failed to write his name.

In the twenty-odd books known to have been autographed by the dramatist, the signature is commonly "Will: Congreve," but the surname is sometimes preceded by "W," "Wm," "Willm," "Gul," "Gulielmi," or "Gulielmus." One of Congreve's books preserved in the Yale Library uses both "W: Congreve" and "Gulielmus Congreve" in different signatures. None of the signatures should be accepted as that of the dramatist until the handwriting is verified, for "William" has long been a common Christian name in the Congreve family. In 1700 there were living no fewer than five Congreves bearing this name, all descended from the same grandfather. One of these was Colonel William Congreve of Highgate, a cousin of the dramatist, whose papers have been confused with those of the dramatist in many sales as well as in many American libraries. The colonel usually signed "Will:" as did the dramatist, but the two cousins formed the "W" in strikingly different ways. The colonel rounded the first upper prong of this letter and brought the middle prong to only little more than half the height of the other prongs; the dramatist sharpened the first prong and brought the middle prong fully up to the height of the others.

Since the present Duke of Leeds reports that he no longer has books bearing Congreve's signature, we may presume that they were largely, if not fully, disposed of in the two sales of 1930 and are now widely scattered. Books with Congreve's signature are preserved at the Yale Library , at the Library of the University of Tennessee , at the Morgan Library , at the Boston Public Library , at the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds , and in the private libraries of E. S. de Beer, Esq., and the Reverend J. F. Gerrard . The editor of this work will be grateful for information concerning the location of other volumes bearing the true signature of William Congreve . Such volumes will be doubly interesting if annotated in the dramatist's handwriting. Some of the books were thus annotated, according to Jacob Tonson, in his letter of 27 January 1728/29 , to his nephew, Jacob Tonson, Junior: "His collection of Books were very genteel & well chosen. I wish you should think them worth your buying; I think there are in books several notes of his own or corrections & everything from him will be very valuable."

The manuscript list consists of 659 entries arranged in rough alphabetical order on forty-four pages in a sort of journal approximately seven by eleven inches in size. The normal entry gives the name of the author , the short title, the format, the place and date of publication, and sometimes the publisher. And finally, after most of the items appears the "Theca" or shelf number--one of 33 shelves on which Congreve arranged his books at his lodgings in Surrey Street, London.

The list is set down in three distinct hands. That no one of these is Congreve's need not surprise us since Congreve had very defective eyesight during the last half of his life. An adequate income from government posts enabled him at this period to employ a secretary, perhaps the "young Amanuensis" that he speaks of in writing to Pope about 1726. That was the year, it seems, when the bulk of the list--587 of the 659 items--was made out. The year is indicated by the fact that this hand enters titles of books published through 1725 but none later. After each alphabetical group a space is left as if for additions, and into these spaces a distinctive second hand has made thirty-one entries, including some as late as 1727 but none later. Then follow forty-one entries by a third hand, including four for 1727 and fourteen for 1728 but none later. Entries by the third hand are probably for books added to the library during Congreve's final illness. It is interesting to note that none of the entries in this last hand are followed by a "Theca" or shelf location, an omission indicating that by the time these titles were entered, the library had been moved from the original quarters in Surrey Street. Perhaps the young Duchess, owner of the books after Congreve's death, had already moved them to her house in St. James's--and possibly the hand is that of her secretary.

A small cross is marked before most of the 659 items--before all but fifty-eight . Perhaps these crosses were used in connection with an inventory taken in 1729 when the books were inherited by the young Duchess of Marlborough, or in 1740 when the books were incorporated by marriage settlement into the Leeds library. The thirty-seven items then missing were Numbers 27, 29, 54, 97, 109, 110, 127, 136, 169, 196, 217, 227, 246, 249, 275, 307, 350, 373, 393, 417, 432, 438, 439, 492, 494, 517, 520, 529, 530, 531, 532, 590, 591, 598, 605, 653, and 658. The two books that had been lent to "Ld. Hervy" and to the Duchess of Marlborough were in place at the time of the inventory, and each was duly acknowledged by a cross. An additional larger cross surrounded by four dots appears before eleven items to indicate books sent--so the librarian says in a marginal note--to the Duchess of Leeds. These larger crosses could not have been made, of course, before 1740.

Congreve's book list is here edited and printed for the first time. After the 659 numbers, which are supplied by the editor to facilitate cross references and indexing, the 659 items of the list are printed with spelling, capitalization, and punctuation as in the manuscript. Occasional raised letters, such as the "r" in "Mr." and the "e" in "ye," are brought down into the line. The great variety of dots and dashes used to indicate shortened titles are consistently eliminated. Underscored words are printed in italics. The line breaks in the manuscript are indicated by shilling marks . In the manuscript many of the "Theca" numbers have been written over older numbers . Most of the older numbers are illegible, and only the newer, more legible numbers are printed. The occasional use of brackets in the manuscript makes impractical the editorial expansion in brackets of such abbreviations as "p" in No. 9 and in No. 180 . The thirty-one entries by the second hand and the forty-one by the third hand are designated by the first line of the annotation.

In the paragraph following each item from the manuscript list, the editor attempts to give the author's name , to fill out the short title somewhat when it seems interesting or helpful in identification, and to show the place of publication, the name of the publisher, the year of publication, and the format. The letters "V" and "I" are usually given the English equivalents. Otherwise the short title follows the spelling and punctuation of the title page of the copy examined , with capitalization for only the first word of the title and for proper names.

All the items in Congreve's list have been identified, at least tentatively. There is most uncertainty, perhaps, about Numbers 114, 368, 375, and 412. Besides these, twenty others, though well enough known in some edition, have not been found in any library in the identical edition of Congreve's list: Numbers 9, 30, 113, 129, 130, 197, 210, 217, 240, 271, 277, 296, 323, 345, 366, 376, 435, 569, 578, and 637. Furthermore, Numbers 160, 185, 211, 379, 394, 567, and 647 present difficulties perhaps due to errors on the part of the person making the manuscript entry.

It will be noticed that forty or more of the items have not been found in the format given by the manuscript list. This discrepancy may be explained, at least in part, by the tendency of the makers of the list to judge the format merely by size. For example, a large duodecimo is called an octavo, while many small octavos are called duodecimos. The discrepancies involve chiefly the smaller volumes. Not a single folio volume is involved.

The finding lists of libraries have been arranged geographically, including usually one European library and several American libraries located from New England to the Pacific Coast. The ideal has been to find a copy in each of seven key libraries: the British Museum , Harvard , The New York Public Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Library of Congress , the Newberry Library , and the Huntington Library . The editor has checked Congreve's list with the catalogues of the seven key libraries, except for The New York Public Library and the Newberry Library, where the checking was done by members of the respective library staffs.

Occasionally an ideal distribution in the seven libraries is found, as for Numbers 10, 23, 42, 44, 88, 90, 99, and 100. Whenever an edition is not available in the key library, an effort has been made to find it in another library of the region. For books not at the British Museum, references are made to the Bodleian, the Biblioth?que Nationale, or other European libraries. Books not at Harvard are most frequently found at Yale or the Boston Public Library. Those not at the Huntington Library are frequently at the nearby William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

Of the American libraries in the finding lists, exclusive of the key libraries, the editor has examined practically all editions cited at the Boston Public Library, the Yale Library, and the Clark Library. Other American libraries are, for the most part, cited on the authority of the Union Catalog of the Library of Congress. Of the European libraries, exclusive of the British Museum, the editor has examined practically all editions cited at libraries in Paris, Brussels, The Hague, Leiden, Amsterdam, Florence, Rome, Oxford, and Cambridge, and at the various legal and medical libraries in London. Other English libraries are cited on the authority of the National Central Library, London.

In Congreve's list about sixty-two of the 659 entries are cross references or else duplicate entries. On the other hand, some entries account for more than a single title. Numbers 405-408, for example, include a total of twenty-six titles. There are approximately 620 separate titles in the list. Of these 620, about 481 may be found in the British Museum, 338 in the Harvard Library, 192 in the Library of Congress, 188 in The New York Public Library, 186 in the Huntington Library, 184 in the Newberry Library, and 148 in the Folger Shakespeare Library. At the Bodleian may be consulted about thirty-four titles not in the British Museum; and at the Biblioth?que Nationale, about thirty-seven titles in neither the British Museum nor the Bodleian. At Yale there are about sixty-eight titles not at Harvard; and at the Clark Library, about forty-seven titles not at the Huntington.

We may well ask, What are some of the uses that can be made of Congreve's book list? For one thing, it may be studied as a carefully selected private library of the period. What authors, what editions, what subjects are to be found in such a library? Which of Congreve's contemporaries are represented? Which of the current books seemed important enough for a fellow writer to buy or to subscribe for in advance of publication? To what extent did the literature of ancient Greece, of Rome, of modern Italy, of France, of Spain, of Germany find its way into a private library in England's Augustan Age? And to what extent were such books in their original language? One scholar has found in Congreve's book list the information he needed about certain early editions of Horace. Another, inquiring into the Italian influence on England during the eighteenth century, has found a partial answer in the Italian books and in the books about Italy set down in Congreve's list.

Fortunately the list can be made to give information about the one who collected and used the books. We know less, perhaps, about Congreve than about any other equally significant writer of the period; and consequently, additional information about him is especially important. We have long known of course, that he made translations from the French, the Latin, and the Greek and have assumed that he read those languages. We feel more confident about the extent of his reading when we find a full fourth of his library in French, nearly a fifth in Latin, and a goodly number of volumes in Greek. About twenty titles in Italian make us reasonably sure that he read that language also. And since he had in Spanish only a Spanish-English dictionary and two Spanish books , we may assume that his knowledge of Spanish must have been slight indeed. His deficiency in German is strongly suggested by the fact that German is represented in the list only in translation.

As a translator from the Greek and the Latin Congreve first brought himself to the attention of Dryden, who pronounced the youthful Congreve "more capable than any man I know" to translate the whole of Homer. Congreve never completed that proposed translation, but years later he was singled out by Pope for the dedication of his Homer. That Congreve's genuine interest in the classics continued throughout his life is attested by the constant and carefully chosen additions to his library. His collection is richest in the works of Cicero, Homer, Horace, and Virgil, but he owned the collected works of many other classical authors. The breadth of his interest is shown by the fact that over sixty Greek and Latin writers are either represented in his library or referred to in his own writings. The Italian Louis Riccoboni visited Congreve in 1727 and was surprised to find that a dramatist could be so scholarly. In Congreve, he said, "Taste joined with great Learning."

Certain items in the inventory tend to confirm reports that have hitherto been given little credit. One of these has to do with Congreve's interest in horses and horseback riding, which seems to be supported by item Number 277:

The gentleman's jockey, and approved farrier; instructing in the natures, causes, and cures of all diseases incident to horses. 8vo. London, 1717.

Congreve did not, like his friend Jonathan Swift, lose interest in the purchase of books during the last third of his life. For Swift's library we have an inventory made when Swift was about fifty. Another inventory at his death more than twenty-five years later showed but few additions. In the case of Congreve, the earliest inventory--the 587 items in the first hand made out about 1726--came only three years before his death. But active buying must have continued throughout his life as shown by the dates in the imprints. The thirty-one entries by the second hand seem to indicate approximately the purchases for 1727 and the forty-one entries by the third hand approximately those for 1728. Congreve was evidently an active purchaser of books from his youth and did not stop during his last years.

The editor is deeply grateful to the many librarians on both sides of the Atlantic and to others who have generously assisted in the preparation of this study. A grant from the American Philosophical Society in 1949 made possible the search which incidentally turned up Congreve's manuscript book list, and grants from the Henry E. Huntington Memorial Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library provided time and rare faculties for the editing.

The staff of the Union Catalog of the Library of Congress has located in America editions in the book list not already included in the Catalog; S. P. L. Filon, Esq., of the National Central Library in London, has helped with English books neither in the British Museum nor in the libraries at Oxford and Cambridge; and Dr. Stanley Pargellis has very kindly had Congreve's list checked for all items in the Newberry Library. The Reserve Division has noted all titles in The New York Public Library.

To His Grace, the Duke of Leeds, and to the Trustees of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society the editor is indebted for kind permission to photostat and publish the list.

Among the many individuals to whom the editor is indebted, special mention should be made of Miss Isabel Fry and Mr. Lyle Wright, of the Huntington Library; Mrs. Edna C. Davis, of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library; Miss Eleanor E. Goehring, Professor John L. Lievsay and Professor Alwin Thaler, of the University of Tennessee; and Dr. Giles E. Dawson, Dr. James G. McManaway, and Dr. Edwin E. Willoughby, of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Many items in the book list might not have been identified except for the kindness and the genius of Dr. Willoughby.

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE BOOK LIST

BM The British Museum, London.

BN Biblioth?que Nationale, Paris.

Clark The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles, California.

Folg The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C.

Harv The Harvard Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hunt The Henry E. Huntington Memorial Library, San Marino, California.

LC The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

NYP The New York Public Library, New York City.

Names of libraries not given in full may usually be filled out by the addition of "Library" or "University Library."

BIBLIOTHECA GUL: CONGREVE, ARMIGERI

The 1611 reprint, now very rare, differs from the first edition of 1597 only in the title page. For Congreve's copy of the Latin translation by Natale Conti, see No. 33 below.

Giovanni Battista Marino . L'Adone, poema. . . . Con gli argomenti del Conte Fortuniano Sanvitale, et l'allegorie di Don Lorenzo Scoto. In Parigi, presso Oliviero di Virano, 1623. fol.

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